1. Field of the Invention
The field of art to which this invention pertains may be generally located in the class of devices relating to support racks. Class 211, Supports, Racks, United States Patent Office Classification, appears to be the applicable general area of art to which the subject matter similar to this invention has been classified in the past.
2. Description of the Prior Art
This invention relates to garden equipment support racks for mounting to a wall, or the like, for removably supporting one or more garden tools or other miscellaneous items. Heretofore, various wall mounted storage racks have been proposed for supporting and storing garden tools such as racks, shovels, brooms, hoes, and the like. Garden equipment support racks are presently available which include a wall mounted, horizontal disposed rail with a plurality of horizontally mounted side rails or hooks projecting forwardly from said horizontal rail. The U.S. Patents to Ratzloff, U.S. Pat. No. 4,467,925, and Arnold, U.S. Pat. No. 5,143,228 disclose garden tool storage racks which require a wall supported, horizontal rail which spreads out sidewardly of the rack structure. A disadvantage of the aforementioned garden tool storage racks, which require a wall supported, horizontal rail is that such storage racks cannot be employed in circumstances where only a limited wall space is available, whereby only short wall supported horizontal rails may be employed, which results in limited tool storage capacity. The aforementioned prior art wall mounted support racks, which require horizontal rails, cannot be mounted with one support rack above another, to provide extra storage capacity because of the long handles of garden tools mounted on such support racks. A further disadvantage of the aforedescribed wall supported storage racks is that they are not compact in structure for shipping purposes nor for display purposes in retail stores.
The support rack shown in the Arnold patent has a further disadvantage in that it includes a garden basket which uses wall space which otherwise would be available for tool storage. Still another disadvantage of the Ratzloff support rack is that the projecting pair of side rails employed by such racks do not have structural design integrity, in that they do not project forwardly enough to hold more than about two tools per hook, and they lack vertical support whereby if they are fully loaded, they may fail due to structural weakness since the weight of the tools mounted thereon can cause such unsupported hooks or side rails to bend downwardly causing the tools to slide off and fall down, and possibly cause injury to any person near such support racks. Each pair of hooks or side rails employed in the Ratzloff and Arnold support racks are fixed relative to each other and cannot be adjusted sidewise to provide different widths therebetween for special purposes for storing extra wide items, such as a pick ax or extra narrow items, as hand trowels. Other conventional support racks employ hooks which are seated in holes in peg boards or hang on an expansion shield supported by wall boards, but such support racks have a limited tool supporting capacity.